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Titus Oates and the Popish Plot

The 17th Century was not a great time to be Catholic in England. The Tudor monarchs had strongly implanted Protestantism as the national religion, and the tension between these two faiths was at an all-time high. A renegade Protestant named Titus Oates decided to play anti-Catholic sentiment like a banjo, because why not? He masterminded a huge fake conspiracy called the Popish Plot, successfully convincing the English that the Catholics intended to assassinate King Charles II. Many Catholics died for this lie before Oates was charged with being a muckraking douche-galleon.